What do we have a shot at? A U.S. strike, a shot at raising gas prices? A shot at crumbling our already fragile economy? I think if it stays high enough then we have a shot at avoiding a major U.S. catastrophe. I don't know about you but here on the Gulf Coast it is no longer fun or exciting to see a hurricane churning across the Atlantic. And unfortunately it looks like we are about to have one, let's hope shear can rip it apart.
I think all hurricane "fans" can or should pray for at this point are more Hurricane Bill type systems that they can look at and talk about but recurve, since a Katrina type situation at this point would be disasterous for the US, as already said (that's not even accounting for man-made or other natural (N1H1) disasters that might be in our future)...
This is not the US hurricane season of decades ago, when the Gulf coast, except for New Orleans and Houston, was mostly rural - so much has changed in my lifetime that it's almost hard to grasp...
I also agree that this system might be a problem - we'll see what happens...
Frank